The Senate appropriately spanks Thomas Woodrow Obama

The Senate Republicans’ letter to Iran’s Ayatollah is addressed as much to Barack Obama as to the cleric; neither man has a clue about how the American constitutional system works. In his self-righteousness, intellectual arrogance, and thin skin, Obama resembles no other president so much as Thomas Woodrow Wilson. In fact, one must wonder if Wilson has not returned from the grave, this time as a Black man but still determined to do as much damage as he can to America in the fields of foreign affairs, national security, and fidelity to the Constitution.

Wilson, of course, used the U.S. military to intervene in Mexico and other South American nations — using the bayonet to teach Mexicans to “elect good men” — and took the United States into a war in which America had no genuine national interest at stake, a little European fracas known as the Great War (1914-1918). He also established and championed the theoretical “right” of self-determination, a right from hell that caused multiple, and enormous blood lettings through the rest of the 20th century, and does so right up to today. Wilson and all succeeding U.S. presidents have touted this as a “universal right,” but of course have only been willing to apply it if they approve of and support the group or nation that is seeking self-determination. In recent decades, for example, no Muslims need not apply for the right.

Wilson also tried to single handedly orchestrate the making of the peace treaty that ended the Great War, taking to the Paris Peace Conference as his assistants only those who were made in his image: a gaggle of theory-palsied and common senseless professors from the “best” American universities. He took few elected officials with him, and no Republicans at all. He also failed to keep the Senate informed about what was going on in Allied councils — the “Big Four” were the leaders of the U.S., Britain, France, and Italy — as the peace conference unfolded. The hapless Woodrow and his professorial lackeys, as matters turned out, were thoroughly slicked by the common sense, lethal political acumen, and willingness to flatter Wilson of Britain’s David Lloyd George and France’s Georges Clemenceau. The brilliant and narcissistic Woodrow then put his signature to a treaty that did nothing but ensure the occurrence of a second and more murderous great war.

If this was not absurd enough, the wondrously unrealistic Woodrow also pushed for the United States to join the League of Nations organization that was formulated at the Paris conference and became part of the Treaty of Versailles. In the League of Nations’ Covenant, Article 10 obliged the United States to automatically go to war in support of any member of the League that was the target of “external aggression.” Had Article 10 been ratified by the U.S. Senate it would have negated American sovereignty and independence of action on the most important question the nation can face: When, against whom, and for what will the United States go to war?

Senate Republicans, already smarting from Wilson’s refusal to either keep the Senate informed or take Republicans with him to Paris, refused, all praise to God, to ratify the treaty and the League Covenant. They thereby protected America’s sovereignty and independence of action until a later Senate surrendered both by joining NATO and the UN in the wake of the second Great War, a conflict that Wilson had helped mightily to facilitate. By exercising their legitimate constitutional role Senate Republicans also, hopefully, helped to bring on the stroke that disabled that curse of a man. Interestingly, Wilson’s stoke yielded in the form of Mrs. Wilson the first — if de facto — female U.S. president. She seems to have treated the national government as her fiefdom, controlled access to Wilson, and was a thoroughly unpleasant and haughty woman to those who questioned what she had unilaterally decided were her sole prerogatives. An early but eerily similar version of Hillary Clinton, I suppose.

The letter sent by Senate Republicans to Iran’s Ayatollah, therefore, is just another means of playing that body’s completely constitutional role. I say this knowing full well that most of the Senators — including Democrats who agree with but did not sign the letter — want a war with Iran. The Senators want war for Israel’s’ sake, and Obama’s amateur, Jimmy Kimmel-style diplomacy could make Israel decide to attack Iran — for which Muslims would blame the United States. Perhaps our genius politicians are creating another component of what seems to be their specialty, an endless caravan of lose-lose situations for America.

Nonetheless, the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, has been ignored and its constitutional prerogatives derided by Obama, Kerry, Biden, Rice, and their detestable lickspittles at the New York Times on the issue of an agreement with Iran. In addition, Obama and his team of amateurish diplomats have given every indication that Obama will try to negate the Constitution’s requirements for treaty making by side-stepping the Senate and taking the Iran deal directly to the terminally anti-American UN for ratification.

In this train-wreck of an episode the only thing that may be salvageable is the rule of law. The Senate Republicans know and, at times, respect the Constitution far better than Obama — who all but drips contempt for its provisions — and destroying any Kerry-made treaty that does not serve genuine U.S. interests would be a good and undeniably constitutional day’s work. If Obama does not bring the agreement to the Senate for advice and consent, it should be deprived of funding for implementation. As a bonus for America, such a result might also produce the same impact on Obama as the Senate’s non-ratification appears to have had on Woodrow Wilson.

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Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.
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“My policy has been and will continue to be … to be on friendly terms with, but independent of, all nations on earth. To share in the broils of none. To supply their wants, and be carriers for them all; being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so; and that nothing short of self-respect, and that justice which is essential to a national character, ought to involve us in.”
— George Washington